Timestamps
(02:13) Prukalpa discussed her upbringing in India and studying Engineering at the Nanyang Tech University in Singapore.
(03:52) Prukalpa shared the key learnings from her summer internship as an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs.
(05:37) Prukalpa went over the seed idea for SocialCops (Read her Quora answer on the fundraising story).
(11:27) Prukalpa gave a brief overview of the business model at SocialCops.
(12:45) Prukalpa unpacked her talk called “How Big Data Can Influence Decisions That Actually Matter” at TEDxGateway 2017 related to the data-for-good initiatives that SocialCops facilitated.
(15:23) Prukalpa shared her thoughts on the future of the Data-for-Good movement.
(17:49) Prukalpa discussed the challenges that SocialCops’ data teams faced and the founding story behind Atlan.
(21:38) Prukalpa went over the trust-based culture that enabled SocialCops’ 8-member data team to build out India’s National Data Platform.
(27:00) Prukalpa dissected the six principles of Atlan’s DataOps Culture Code.
(31:37) Prukalpa unpacked the notion of Data Catalog 3.0, which is a key value prop of the Atlan platform.
(36:01) Prukalpa provided the 3-level framework to ensure data quality (detect -> prevent -> cure) and strong practices to maintain high-quality data.
(40:19) Prukalpa revealed the challenges that organizations face when starting their data governance initiatives.
(45:35) Prukalpa talked about the under-invested building blocks of modern data platforms.
(49:24) Prukalpa raised the importance of integration for Atlan to work well with the rest of the modern data stack.
(50:39) Prukalpa recapped the trends that Chief Data Officers needed to watch out for in 2021.
(54:01) Prukalpa gave fundraising advice for founders currently seeking the right investors for their startups.
(58:42) Prukalpa discussed Atlan’s outreach initiatives to engage with the broader data community actively.
(01:01:03) Prukalpa went over Atlan’s hiring philosophy based on the concept of People-as-a-Moat to attract, engage, and grow top talent — as inspired by the McKinsey advantage.
(01:05:22) Prukalpa shared Atlan’s Go-To-Market initiatives in the US this year and emphasized the importance of building an execution machine.
(01:08:53) Prukalpa described the state of the data community in India.
(01:10:25) Prukalpa shared entrepreneurship books that have deeply impacted her startup journey.
(01:12:16) Prukalpa briefly mentioned what public recognition means to her in the pursuit of democratizing data for the world.
(01:14:23) Closing segment.
Prukalpa’s Contact Info
Mentioned Content
Atlan (Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Documentation)
“Empowering Organizations to Become Masters of Their Data” (Video)
Atlan Labs (Open-Source Projects)
Humans of Data Interviews (Interviews)
The DataOps Culture Code (Document)
The Data Catalog Primer (EBook)
Blog Posts
Voices In The Head of a Middle-Class Aspiring Startup Founder (July 2013)
SocialCops: What We Actually Do (Oct 2016)
People-as-a-Moat: What Startups Can Learn From McKinsey About Building A Strong Company (Aug 2018)
Going from Great People to Greater Teams: How We Think About Growth at Atlan (August 2018)
Onwards and Upwards: Chapter 2 for SocialCops (July 2019)
What is data quality? (Jan 2021)
Top 5 Data Trends For CDOs to Watch Out For In 2021 (Feb 2021)
Data Catalog 3.0: Modern Metadata for the Modern Data Stack (Feb 2021)
We Failed To Setup a Data Catalog 3x. Here’s Why (March 2021)
The Building Blocks of a Modern Data Platform (March 2021)
Books
“The Hard Things About The Hard Things” (by Ben Horowitz)
“Hatching Twitter” (by Nick Bilton)
“The McKinsey Way” (by Ethan Rasiel)
“How Google Works” (by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg)
“The Mom Test” (by Rob Fitzpatrick)
“Disciplined Entrepreneurship” (by Bill Aulet)
“Big Data” (by Mayer-Schnonberger and Cukier)
Talks
Game of Life (TEDxIIMShilong — March 2014)
How Big Data Can Influence Decisions That Actually Matter (TEDx Gateway — April 2017)
Better Villages Through Big Data (TED Talks India — December 2017)
The power of data science to measure unmeasured parameters in Emerging Markets (PyData Dehli — Oct 2019)
The Girl Who Thinks In Numbers: Data Warrior Prukalpa Sankar (Feb 2020)
Notes
My conversation with Prukalpa was recorded back in April 2021. Since the podcast was recorded, a lot has happened at Atlan!
They raised a $16M Series A led by Insight Partners, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Waterbridge Ventures, and amazing angels such as the founding teams of Snowflake and Looker.
They got mentioned in Gartner’s Inaugural Market Guide for Active Metadata Management.
They announced a partnership with Snowflake.
Prukalpa has written more content. I’d recommend checking out:
The list of resources on the modern data stack.
The behind-the-scenes look at how Postman’s data team uses Atlan.
The new way to think about data strategy using the Data Advantage Matrix.
About the show
Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.
Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. Get in touch with feedback or guest suggestions by emailing khanhle.1013@gmail.com.
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